Today’s armament maintainers are tasked with performing flightline (O-Level) maintenance with an assortment of legacy test sets that greatly limit the ability to quickly and efficiently verify armament system readiness, diagnose failures, and ultimately return the aircraft to full mission...
Technology
The Air Force should quickly and comprehensively adopt digital methods to regain the speed of fielding new gear necessary to match the "blistering" pace of China's modernization, a new Mitchell Institute paper recommends.
The Space Force has handed out a contract for startup Starfish Space to build and launch a satellite that will dock with and maneuver U.S. government satellites in geosynchronous orbit, a "first-of-its-kind" effort in the service’s burgeoning move to embrace space mobility and logistics.
The Space Force is working on a “hybrid” satellite communications terminal that can use multiple frequencies to connect warfighters with military and commercial constellations alike across orbits. But key lawmakers are concerned the effort is too focused on just the Department of the Air Force and ...
The artificial intelligence that controlled the F-16 on which Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall flew last week was evenly matched in dogfights against a human pilot with more than 2,000 flight hours, Kendall said May 8, as he made the case that autonomy will become ...
New technologies such as augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) and remote simulator instruction are helping train Airmen faster and improve graduation rates, according to Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson, the head of Air Education and Training Command. That technology is key to what he calls “the ...
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall caught a ride in the front seat of a modified, artificial intelligence-piloted F-16 on May 2, a high-profile show of confidence in the service’s autonomous technologies—and another key step in maturing that technology for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program.
The Air Force’s 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing added a new squadron April 25 and will activate another May 2—expanding the structure of the service’s lone spectrum warfare wing as it looks to grow its numbers too.
Even as the Air Force prepares to award more contracts for Collaborative Combat Aircraft in the coming months and field them in the next few years, the service is still considering how its Airmen will interact with and operate the unmanned “wingman” drones, the head of ...